Recycling

What's This About?

The passage of the Waste-Free Ontario Act in June 2016 marked a turning point for our province. It ushered in a new opportunity for Ontario to lead North America in the advancement of a strong circular economy that reduces waste and lowers greenhouse gas emissions, while promoting economic growth and creating good, well-paying jobs for Ontarians.

In fact, the Conference Board of Canada has identified that moving to a more circular economy could support the creation of close to 13,000 new jobs in Ontario and provide a $1.5-billion boost to the province’s gross domestic product.

But the promise of Ontario’s circular economy legislation has not yet been realized. For it to be effective, several regulations must be developed to transform Ontario’s existing recycling programs into true producer responsibility initiatives that empower the market, not the government, to increase diversion by treating waste as a resource that can be recovered and recycled into new products.

Getting the design of these regulations right could pull Ontario out of a decades-long recycling slump and put our province in a leadership position on policy design and environmental protection. That's why the OWMA and its committees have ranked the development of new regulations as a top issue for our association.